Abstract
Derrida’s seminar “The Phantom of the Other”, reads Heidegger’s “Language in the Poem”, which has the poetry of Georg Trakl at its center. Among the principal themes of Derrida’s seminar and/or of Heidegger’s essay are Heidegger’s effort to “place” Trakl’s presumably single, unsung poem; the relation of pain to poetry; the two “strokes” of Geschlecht, a word that in part means the sexes, the first stroke being neutral, the second being evil; the German language and the Heideggerian idiom; philosophical nationalities and nationalisms; Derridean double-reading.